I closed my eyes and let out a sigh. My stomach twisted. I remembered the way I hadn’t been able to smell past the red stones, how I’d felt weaker and unable to grow my bark or vines. The succubi were rendered helpless. And so would any other Wild who entered that complex to retrieve them. The acidic urge to throw up rose from my stomach and I swallowed it down. My knees threatened to give out. I leaned against the outer portion of the stairwell.
“How do we get past them, then?” I asked, a new level of hopelessness carving its way into my heart. I had a whole galere of Wilds needing to be freed, and no way of saving them.
“The blood stones only affect those who bleed monthly, Wild Women who are still in their fertile years.”
I jerked up to meet her eyes. “The stones are linked to menstruation? That’s why you’re calling them blood stones?”
She gave one short nod. “The monthly blood is powerful, potent, and misunderstood. For these reasons it is feared.”
My mother had been right when she’d hinted as much in her stories of temple priestesses acting as oracles during their bleeding times each month. Had she known about the blood stones, too?
“So then we have to send in men and children?” I asked. “The incubi have already turned us down and human men aren’t strong enough to go against Hunters. Mermaids are the only group who have young children, and we can’t get ahold of them. Plus, we’d never ask them to send in their daughters, that’d be wrong on so many levels.”
“Gabrielle’s death has caused dissension among the mermaid ranks,” Drosera said as though she were talking about the weather. Gabrielle’s name so casually on her lips still stung to hear. “They have been displaced and split to seek out support. At this time they are unwilling to lend help.”
“We’re screwed. Why are the nagin even coming, then?” I thought out loud.
“They have sent their elders,” the rusalka said. “Those whose experiences no longer bleed from their wombs for the good of their kind, but rather now store up their wisdom within them to guide the younger ones.”
Nothing in Anwen’s voice led me to believe she’d reached the years past fertility. I questioned my own assumptions of her age and put a pin in it later to ask myself why I assumed strong Wilds were younger Wilds.
“Two members of your coterie are able to assist as well,” Drosera reminded me.
My heart nearly seized. My two aunts, Patricia and Abigale, had already gone through menopause. Patricia could hold her own, I had no doubt. But Abigale was still in a fragile state over the trauma of her daughter, Shawna.
I gave a nod. Drosera didn’t need to read my mind to know I hesitated at the idea of sending my aunts to face a complex of Hunters alongside Wilds they’d never met. But to ask Wilds from other countries to fight this battle for us, and not include our own warrior women, would be unthinkable. It’s not that I feared whether or not my aunts would agree to the task. I knew they would. I didn’t want to have to ask them in the first place.
“Tell me,” Drosera asked, peering at the side of the house again for a quick second and lowering her voice even more. “Do you believe your aunts incapable of protecting themselves?”
Her question caught me off-guard.
“Of course not,” I answered automatically, not sure how much I believed my answer to be true.
“Well,” I started, correcting my shoot-from-the-hip remark. “I do worry about them, that they’re not as experienced in combat with Hunters.” Even that response didn’t feel right on my tongue. Hadn’t my aunts fought beside me and the rest of the Wilds at the Washington Hunter complex and then again at the Oregon winery? They were just as experienced as my sisters, and yet if my sisters were called on to attack the Hunter complex without me, I’d worry, yeah, but I wouldn’t fret the same way.
Drosera didn’t dignify my last asinine remark with a response.
So, naturally, I kept going. “They just grew up in a different time, learned to follow more than lead.” I could just imagine my inner huldra shaking her head as I spoke. I didn’t know how much I disagreed with myself until the words were out of my mouth and had no way of returning. I gave up. “I’m ridiculous,” I said. “Of course they’re capable. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
The left corner of the rusalka’s lip lifted. “You are the inexperienced one and yet you underestimate those who have experienced harder days, those who have raised daughters in a world full of sons.”
I didn’t quite catch what she meant by that last part, but I was too ashamed of myself to ask.
“Have you ever taken the time or interest to ask your elders of their struggles?” she asked.
I pursed my lips. Point taken.
“One elder took the time to share her experiences with you, what she’d learned, what she’d believed, what she’d hoped for,” Drosera said.
My mind went blank before I realized who she referred to. “My mother.”
“Would you not say she is your driving force?” the rusalka asked, urging my thoughts to follow the path of breadcrumbs she lay before me.
I stared at the old oak tree. I hadn’t thought of it that way, my mother being my driving force in all of this. I’d just figured Shawna held that title. But Shawna was with us now, safe, and yet I still pushed ahead. I desired freedom not just for Shawna and the Washington Wilds, but for all American Wild Women. I desired justice. The sense of justice my mother knowingly fed to me through bedtime stories and hypothetical questions that it turns out weren’t very hypothetical. My mother raised the future liberator of Wild Women, maybe even the future liberator of herself. Had she done it knowingly? And if so, how did she know?
“Do you know if she’s still alive, my mother?” I asked, still staring at the tree, deep in thought. In that moment it occurred to me that I’d had two differing sides when it came to hope that my mother lived. One side couldn’t wait to find her, rescue her, and make up for lost time. The other side hoped she wasn’t still alive, hoped she hadn’t gone through years of being a ward of the Hunters. This is why I often reigned in my thoughts when they skirted the territory of dreaming of her rescue, why I tried to shift them to more realistic matters like getting Shawna, and now helping the succubi.
“I do know,” Drosera said.
A rustle of movement sounded from the side of the house and Drosera jerked her head to study the area again. “When Anwen arrives, be sure to tell her that I will be back.” The rusalka disappeared into thin air as she finished the last word.
I gasped and jumped back, studying my surroundings to see how the hell the rusalka played a trick of the eye so well.
A male ran to the railing of the elevated porch that wrapped around the side and back of the house, and called down to me. “You okay?”
I lifted my eyes to his, to Aleksander’s. His disheveled hair hung forward as he gazed down at me. Apparently my lack of an answer concerned him because he jumped over the rail and landed on the soft dirt below with a quickness. When his shoes hit the grass all six-plus feet of him rushed to my protection.
Aleksander stopped short a foot away from me and turned in each direction, searching for the culprit. He paused and looked back to me, standing beneath the hazy glow of the front porch light. “I felt an unknown energy and heard you gasp. But, there’s no one here,” he said in that accent of his, a little disappointed and a lot confused.
“Except for you,” I countered. “Why are you here?”
The warmth and protection in his eyes disappeared. He crossed his arms and flashed a slightly mischievous smile. “Why, to protect you, of course,” he said as though he spoke a commonly understood fact.
I put my hand out in front of me. “So let me get this straight,” I started. “You’re a pacifist who refuses to help me get your…cousins…back from the Hunters, and yet you are here to protect me? How? From who?”
Aleksander side-eyed the steps and exhaled. He dropped his flirtatious sing-song way of speaking and leveled with me. “Look, th
is isn’t my idea of a good time either,” he said, his voice slightly deeper now.
“Then go home. Why are you here?” I asked for the second time in a handful of minutes. I shifted my balance and waited.
“I’ve been guarding the house tonight from a lounge chair on the side deck. Can we talk somewhere more private?” he asked, motioning for me to go before him, onto the first step.
My initial response was a hard no, but logic told me to listen to what the incubus had to say. I decided not to go much deeper in my soul-searching as to why I took that first step and then climbed the stairs ahead of him. Halfway to the living room, I wondered if he was enjoying the view, and turned to ask him as much, as a way of letting him know I knew all about his kind. But what I saw was not a male ogling my ass, rather an incubus gazing ahead of us, deep in thought. I’d be lying if I said his lack of ogling didn’t pee on my ice cream a little.
Who likes to be wrong about people?
No one.
I didn’t like that he closed the front door behind him. He strode past me to sit on the living room couch.
“Please,” he said, patting the cushion beside him.
I ran a hand through my hair, figured what the hell, and joined him. We sat awkwardly searching one another for a few breaths before he started the conversation.
“I can imagine being here, alone, with me, is not the most comfortable scenario for you right now, and so I want you to know that I appreciate your allowing me to come here,” he said. His eyes smiled and I knew he meant what he said.
I gave a nod.
He leaned into the corner of the couch, facing me.
“Incubi are a walking contradiction,” he explained. He paused before continuing and I sensed hesitation, maybe even nervousness. “We deal in matters of energy and excel in sexual energy. Social norms have no bearing as to whom we share our sexual energy with. Yet, when we lock onto our life mate, there is no key to unlock the intense need we have to protect and adore them, to receive the same from them in return.”
I looked up at the ceiling fan in thought. A whole galere of succubi were currently being detained at a Hunter’s complex. The mermaids were unwilling to come to our aid because their shoal was tearing apart at the seams. Wild Women I’d never met, kinds I didn’t even know existed twenty-four hours ago, were on their way to maybe help or maybe complicate matters more. I just found out that only non-menstruating Wilds had a chance at saving the succubi, which cuts our already limited ranks to barely anything. And this incubus wanted me to make his feelings for me a priority in my tornado of a world?
I itched my eyebrow as though any movement was a replacement for words.
Fuck it.
I leveled a gaze at the muscular incubus sitting inches from me. “Marcus, my boyfriend, already explained this to me,” I said.
Had I actually ever determined Marcus was my boyfriend? I couldn’t be sure. But there it was, out in the open, between the incubus and me.
I leaned back, done playing mind games and easing out information that clearly refused to budge. “Look, I’m going to be honest. For all of maybe an hour, I considered pretending to have a thing for you so that you’d help us.” I looked him in the eye. “It wasn’t my idea and I’m embarrassed that I’d even considering leading someone on, so for that, I’m sorry. But since we’re laying our cards on the table, I should tell you that I don’t feel that way toward you. I admit it’d probably be easier on me if I did, but I don’t.”
His expression didn’t change even a fraction. He sat there, relaxed, confidently leaning back like he owned the place. Don’t ask me how I could tell he was confident. It just poured from him and not always in that cocky way either.
“Well,” Aleksander said, inhaling deeply, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He stood and stretched before making his way to the back sliding glass door. He didn’t invite me to join him, but he didn’t close the door behind him either. The wooden slats beneath him creaked from his weight.
“So, are we done then?” I asked, my confusion with this male growing by the second.
“Done or just begun, the ball’s in your court,” he responded from the deck.
I stood and started toward the hallway to my room where Marcus slept. I paused again, thoroughly confused when Alek didn’t ask me to join him or say goodbye.
“Aleksander?”
“Yes?”
“If you heard and respect what I told you, why are you still staying the night out on the deck?” I asked.
He gave one deep chuckle. “In every aspect of my life I have freewill. Except for this one,” he answered. “According to my heart, mind, and body, you’re my life mate. I’m not stupid enough to fight it; stronger incubi have gone mad trying such a feat. Please don’t take this as offensive or me not respecting your wishes, because believe me, I can’t help but care deeply for you and I want whatever will make you happy, which I realize isn’t me. But I’ve locked onto you.” He sighed. “I deal in energy, remember? And your energy is that of my life mate. Where my mate’s energy goes, so do I.”
A thought occurred to me. “If that’s the case then why isn’t your young incubus at the Oregon Hunter complex trying to get his succubus girlfriend back?” I asked.
Aleksander shifted his weight, still holding the door handle. “He is probably trying as we speak. He’s younger, so the necessity to be near her once she left took longer to begin. We’ve had to lock him in a cell and keep five incubi guarding him at all times.”
I willed my brows to unfurrow. “It’s that intense?”
The incubi leader nodded and scratched the hint of stubble along his jaw. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked weary. It seemed he really couldn’t help being here. He wanted to be back with his hoard.
“If I fought the Hunters, would you join me too, seeing as you’re compelled to be near me?” I asked.
In folklore humans are taught that succubi and incubi compel them, bend the human’s will to fit the creature’s wants and desires. Hell, that’s what the Hunters taught us huldra. But in reality, the succubi and incubi were the ones being compelled, the ones forced to absorb the whims of others.
Aleksander’s shoulders slumped a little, which was a lot for his confident stature. “I would,” he said. “Which would put the men I lead in great danger, not to mention intense turmoil over deciding whether or not to follow me or follow our old ways. I imagine it will ruin our hoard.”
I leaned on the edge of the corner of the hall wall. We could really use the help of Aleksander and his hoard, but not at such a high cost as knowingly destroying familial bonds. If I couldn’t fathom someone doing that to my coterie, I wouldn’t fathom doing that to someone else, especially a group innocent in all of this. “What can I do to break this mate lock thing?” I said. I thought to offer a harpy replacement, but since I hadn’t clearly gotten the okay from Eonza to share her plan of seducing him, I decided to keep that to myself.
Aleksander’s heavy lids opened and his gaze pierced my own. “Either change your mind about me, or let me change your Hunter.”
My answer flowed from my lips in one decisive move. “If I agree to consider those two options would you be honest about what all they entail?” I said.
“What do you want to know?” he asked. He made his way to the couch again, closing the glass door.
“Everything,” I answered. “I want to know everything.”
Twenty-Five
I woke in Marcus’s arms after a fitful night of incubi dreams. Marcus couldn’t have known the process of being changed to an incubus. He couldn’t have, or else he wouldn’t be entertaining the idea.
His broad chest rose and fell in even breaths as I twisted my body to study his peaceful face. I couldn’t imagine him agreeing to the process of becoming an incubus, a sexual ritual to transfer a key component of Aleksander’s energy, the part that made him immortal and powerful, to Marcus. Last night Aleksander had assured me that he was only able t
o create other incubi at such a rate as he created them because of his long time spent as an incubus himself—his experience as an incubus grew so much that he had enough energy to share to create new brothers. Normally, he’d told me, an incubus can change one man in his lifetime, maybe two. But this could be because traditionally incubi didn’t tend to travel in groups; to travel to new areas with other incubi meant fewer lovers for each and sharing wasn’t typically their style. Neither was celibacy. So changing one or two men helped to keep the species going without overpopulation.
Aleksander saw it differently. He believed the humans were increasing in population, so why shouldn’t the incubi? And being the first incubus to create a hoard gave him a safety net, in case the incubi followed in the footsteps of other supernaturals—created groups and then warred to extinction with other, more powerful groups. Aleksander didn’t see his kind as dominant or territorial, but they also weren’t the types to roll over and show their bellies either. They wouldn’t go looking for a fight, but if one was brought to them, one that jeopardized their brotherhood, Aleksander wished to be prepared.
Shockingly, I respected him more once we parted ways last night, once I’d learned everything there was to know about being a life mate to an incubus as well as the process of changing a man into an incubus. Doesn’t mean I wanted any part of either. And yet, to hold up my end of the bargain, I lay beside my Hunter of a man, considering both avenues, racking my brain for a third, hidden option. I imagined him being turned and the feeling of jealousy, a feeling I hadn’t much felt before, swelled within me. Ultimately, it was Marcus’s decision to be turned or not. But if he decided to go ahead with it, I’d want to be the female vessel that the ritual called for when turning a straight male.
Aleksander assured me that the female benefited greatly from the exchange of incubi energy in the turning ritual between two straight men. Most came away having achieved what perfect bliss feels like and are placed on which life path, which changes they need to make, to achieve their own personal blissful fulfilment. Not that I was questioning my purpose or anything. I only questioned their method, why it sounded like the woman was being used…yet again…for man’s gain. Knowing the woman gained as well and was in full knowledge of what she was contributing to, helped to keep me from making the incubi my second worst enemies, right behind the Hunters.
Wild Women Collection Page 43
